


You can't take it with you

by vaguely_concerned



Series: Scoundrels and Thieves 'verse [1]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, canon AU, young mchanzo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-16
Updated: 2016-07-16
Packaged: 2018-07-24 09:37:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7503309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vaguely_concerned/pseuds/vaguely_concerned
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Canon AU where the Shimada family and the Deadlock gang used to do business, Hanzo and McCree had a thing… and then McCree gets the ‘offer’ from Overwatch.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You can't take it with you

The car came to a stop with a screech like metal in pain, sliding in by the shitty motel they’d agreed to meet at should everything go tits up. Jesse didn’t bother to give a second glance at where he’d parked – the motel was the only place for miles. For all intents and purposes the whole damn desert served as a parking lot.

The motel owner, who brought to mind nothing so much as an elderly tortoise whose last piece of lettuce had just wilted, tottered out onto the dilapidated porch to glare at him. He gave her a wave. She softened a little as she recognized him and went back inside.

He rolled the window down and stuck his head out to look for a familiar figure, squinting against the sinking sun. The AC in the car was getting sketchy and the wind cooling down for the night was a nice change. He spotted him almost immediately – Hanzo was standing leaned against a fence, arms crossed over his chest and radiating a near palpable field of annoyance even at this distance. He was wearing one of the loose, wide-sleeved shirts he must somehow fondly imagine helped him blend in in extremely small town America.

Jesse got out of the car, kicked the door closed behind him and went over to lean back against the fence next to him. ”Howdy,” he said, taking off his hat and trying to push away the tightness in his chest. ”Ain’t you a sight for sore eyes.”

Hanzo, completely unmoved by this attempt at manic chipperness, only deigned to send him an unimpressed scowl. He’d pulled his hair back in a ponytail, which sharpened up his features and made him look more severe – maybe a bit older. It suited him. ”You are _extremely_ late. I was about to leave.”

Jesse made a face. ”Yeah, yeah, I know. Something… came up.” Understatement of the year. ”Sorry about that.”

”Not as sorry as you will be if you can not come up with some very good reasons for why you turn up three days late and without the shipment,” Hanzo said with silky menace. ”The rest of the family is all ears, as you can imagine.”

Which, given the Shimada clan’s usual modus operandi and the fact that Jesse, to the best of his knowledge, had both his life and all his limbs intact, must mean that someone had vouched for him. Sure, _someone_. No wonder he was a little grumpy.

“How’d you convince them to let you come all the way out here?” Jesse asked, waving to the sad, empty expanse of the desert. The only reason he knew about the place was because they used to run a few operations out of the motel a long, long time ago; they’d chosen it precisely because it could have served as the platonic ideal for the concept ‘in the middle of nowhere’.  

“I did not tell them where I went, only that I would remedy the situation.”

“Ah. Right.”

Hanzo’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “ _I_ would also like an explanation. Make it good.”

Feet first into the minefield it was.

Jesse gestured with his hat to the desert as if hoping a distracting rabbit might pop out of it if he shook it just right. ”See, me and the boys got talking, and we’re thinking – maybe it’s time to branch out. Try something new, consider a new direction in our business practice –”

”You have been made,” Hanzo said flatly.

”I’ve been made,” Jesse agreed. ”Big time.”

They stood there silently for a while, watching a tumbleweed cartwheeling across the landscape like it was trying out for the Olympics.

”Well, fuck,” Hanzo said eventually, and then, under his breath, a lot of other things Jesse suspected to be something even dirtier in Japanese.

”That is about the long and the short of it, yeah.”

Hanzo stopped swearing long enough to look thoughtful. ”Who was it? If we could – ”

”Overwatch. It was Overwatch. So no, probably not a whole lot anyone could do about it.” Jesse braced himself. Like ripping off a band aid, then. ”They offered me a deal.”

Hanzo turned towards him like an incredulous angel of death.

”Of the kind you can’t refuse,” Jesse clarified. ”They want me to join up with the boy scouts, believe it or not.”

”And they let you run around freely while you consider it?”

”I’ve already agreed. I asked for a few hours to clear up some private affairs, Morrison said yes.”

Hanzo lifted a doubtful eyebrow. ”How very trusting of him.”

”He also kitted me out with this tracker,” Jesse said and pulled up his pants leg to reveal the electronic shackle around his ankle. ”If I don’t turn up by tomorrow morning, this thing’ll knock me right out and transmit my location far and wide. Including to my old employers.” When Hanzo didn’t reply to this beyond a wooden stare, he added: “Weird guy, Morrison. I kept thinking that under all that freedom and apple pie bullshit there must be a real bastard waiting to get out. No one’s _that_ nice unless they’ve got somethin' to hide.”

Hanzo turned away from him again, glowering at the horizon like it personally offended him.

Jesse kept filling the silence like a man building a barricade against oncoming doom. ”Saving the world stuff – not my usual style, I guess, but I won’t knock it until I try it. Especially since the alternative is to rot in jail for the rest of my life. Reyes seems like a man of action, at least. Less holding hands and singing kumbaya and more going out there and doin' something about it.”

Hanzo seemingly only continued to nurse his grudge against the horizon. Jesse shifted a little.

“I, uh. I guess I wanted you to know it from me. Face to face. In person. Seemed only fair, since we’re… well.”

The silence was turning icy enough to cause frostbite. He rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly.

“…you gonna say something, or..?”

That earned him a glance that ought to have turned him into a whole-body papercut. Jesse thought his eyes looked suspiciously shiny, though. “What do you want me to say? You are the one who is leaving.”

And as much as he wanted to argue that it didn’t mean they couldn’t meet up now and then anyway, as desperately as he’d like to think that this part could be the one he got to keep from his old life – that was the truth of it, in the end. There was no way that wouldn’t end badly for both of them, and while he'd easily gamble with his own life he wasn’t willing to risk Hanzo going down with him.

“Yeah. Yeah, I suppose I am. I’m sorry.”

A gust of chill wind raised goosebumps on his arms. He crossed his legs at the ankles and looked down at his shoes for a while, lining the words up right in his head. It was a very long shot, and he didn’t imagine his usual excellent aim was going to help him out this time.

”You know, I meant to ask you… if you’d consider – or even just think about – ”

”Don’t,” Hanzo said, sounding like someone had kicked him squarely in the heart with a steel-toed boot. ”You already know the answer.”

”I know. But if I don’t even ask you, I’ll regret it for the rest of my life.” He glanced at Hanzo’s profile, looking infinitely more tired now. “Come with me.”

Hanzo made a small sound.

“Maybe they’re right. Maybe it is time to change. I’ve caused enough pain over the years, I should start to make up for some of it.” And in his traitorous heart of hearts he knew that it had been true for a long time; it was what he should have been doing all along and he had just chosen not to. “I think we could do a lot of good, the two of us, if we worked together.”

Hanzo was quiet for a long time, eyes never leaving the horizon. Then he sighed. “Even if that was what I wanted, I have other responsibilities. I cannot simply leave, I do not have that choice.”

“Sure you do.”

“Yes? And who would you have me leave in charge of the clan? Our father is dying. My uncle is, quite frankly, a madman who would leave the family in ruins. Or do you think Genji is ready to take on the burden of command?”

Jesse, who had once been there when Hanzo had fished his near terminally drunk brother from an oversized bathtub containing jello and an implausible number of scantily clad young ladies, grimaced a concession that no, that might not be the best idea. “I never said it’d be easy.”

“…my life is not solely my own.”  

“That’s only because you let ‘em have it.”

Hanzo didn’t say anything to that.

Jesse hooked a thumb into his belt and tilted his head back to look at the sky. The sunset was almost done turning the clouds into marvelous watercolor splotches and giving way to the tentative stars of the twilight. The stars were looking a little blurry, actually. He blinked them clear again.

“Well,” he said, clearing his throat. “I had to try.”

Hanzo still didn’t say anything. Maybe there wasn’t that much more left to talk about.

As the sun finally gave up the ghost and sank beneath the horizon, Jesse glanced down at the wide sleeves of Hanzo’s shirt, hiding the dragon tattoo in a half-hearted attempt at anonymity. He slid his fingers under the sleeve and gently pushed it up to the elbow, tracing the lines of the tattoo as he did. He’d mapped out those shapes so many times now, with his lips and his fingertips and his tongue; he was pretty sure he’d be able to draw it from memory for the rest of his life. He studied it one more time, just to be sure.

Hanzo was staring down at Jesse’s fingers moving across his skin too. “I will make sure none of our assassins are sent after you,” he said finally. “You can walk away from this in peace from our side.”

Jesse smiled. “Never let anyone say you never did anything for me.”

The smallest softening in return. “I do try.”

Out of the corner of his eye he noticed that the motel owner was watching them through a pair of binoculars from behind frilly kitchen curtains. He couldn’t bring himself to mind much; on the list of things that had gone topsy turvy in his life lately, being under surveillance from nosy pensioners ranked right at the bottom.

“…I need to go,” Jesse said, making absolutely no move to do so. “Before they rescind their very generous blackmail. Oh, pardon me, I meant offer. Slip of the tongue there.”

“Mhm.” Hanzo still gazed down at Jesse’s hand on his arm, then jumped slightly as his phone gave an insistent chime. “Give me a moment.”

He answered the call in rapid-fire Japanese, which became curter and more exasperated with each muffled answer from the phone. From the way he slowly started rubbing his brow like he was trying to push down a headache, Jesse was prepared to bet that the conversation involved such well-worn concepts as ‘Genji’, ‘drunk tank’ and, conceivably, ‘public indecency at ramen place’. The youngest Shimada brother sure knew how to live life to the fullest.

Hanzo ended the call with a defeated air. “It would seem I need to leave, as well.”

“No rest for the wicked. Either of us.”                     

“Indeed.” After a moment Hanzo picked Jesse’s hat from his unresisting fingers. He buffed it as if to remove some imaginary lint, then put the hat back on Jesse’s head with care and precision. “While we have chosen different paths, I… wish you luck on yours,” he said, oddly formal, already getting more distant. It was a bit like meeting him for the first time all over again, back when Jesse hadn’t been sure the man knew how to smile.

“Hang on – “ He caught Hanzo’s hand as it fell away from the hat, then didn’t quite know what to do with it and meekly let it go again.

Hanzo’s face stayed perfectly implacable, as cold and easy to get anything from as a sheer ice wall.

Jesse was on the verge of saying something – anything, he had no idea what – but didn’t get the chance to before he felt a hand on his cheek and Hanzo kissed him, harsh like an accusation and soft like forgiveness. He closed his eyes and pulled him closer by the waist, feeling the warmth of him even as the desert cooled around them. (Jesse thought he heard a muffled whoop from the kitchen window, but he rather didn’t want that to be what he remembered from this moment and tuned it out.)

When they pulled apart they looked at each other for a long time before Jesse stepped back. Hanzo glanced away, nodding his head, and Jesse nodded back.

“Well. Justice ain’t gonna dispense itself,” he said. “Huh. Now there’s a new addition to my vocabulary. Tastes weird in my mouth.”

That earned him an eye roll – an honest to god, achingly familiar eye roll – and a light push to the chest. There was the smile, finally, and it was too late. “ _Go_.”

And he’d never be able to leave if he looked back that last time, so Jesse tipped his hat, went over to his disgrace of a car, got in, drove away from something he wanted and towards something he wasn’t sure he did, every mile like a new toothache.

He didn’t turn on the radio all the way there.

**Author's Note:**

> I got kind of dizzy trying to find out where this could fit in the Overwatch timeline, so there may be some glaring mistakes there haha. At the very least I’m pretty sure the Omnic war is over at this point, both McCree and Hanzo would be in their mid-twenties, and the… thing with Genji (;_____;) is still a few years away.
> 
> ETA after the info around Ana's reveal - apparently McCree was just a teensy tiny baby when he was recruited into Overwatch? So I guess it's good this is a canon *AU*, because that was kind of a curveball for me. IDK you guys. I just don’t know. The Overwatch timeline is dark and full of 'wtf'


End file.
